In this universe, you're not necessarily surrounded by other wizards all the time -- though you can be if you like. There are a million worlds where wizardry isn't something you feel the need to hide, where wizards out on business can hold their heads up and identify themselves for what they are. "I am on errantry, and I greet you!" is a statement which is honored and welcomed across the width of this Galaxy and its neighbors. Wizards out working the High Road can depend on friendship and a welcome from their opposite numbers wherever they are; they have "cousins" of every shape and color and size and state of matter, colleagues who breathe water, or plasma, or methane, and still have the same old Enemy in common. (See below.)

But you don't have to go anything like that far for a welcome, or to meet someone who understands you, if you're a wizard. After all, somewhere between three and five percent of all human beings are wizards,¹ so at least a few of them are likely to be living in your neighborhood, no matter how far away from the heart of things you think you live. Indeed, some seriously important people may live just around the corner from you: people who've saved the world...and then just gone home and gotten on with what passes (among the nonwizardly) for Real Life.™